Learning the First Notes All Over Again. In Fellini’s film “Orchestra Rehearsal” the Conductor suddenly found himself in the midst of a revolt. The musicians had long murmured against the Conductor on account of his rigorous methods, demands and practice sessions. The exchanges between them and he were bitter. And time did not heal the… Read More Fellini’s Orchestra Rehearsal.
Philip Norman in his book SHOUT’ The Beatles in Their Generation, writes, “If we are honest we must accept the extent to which the heady new freedoms of youth in the sixties paved the way for the frightening, ungovernable world we see about us today. From the happy high of pot and pills and the… Read More The Beatles, the Sixties and Us
“Ah, she looks like snow – I want to put her in a broadway show–Ah she’ll dance and dine–Like a lucifer she’ll always shine… I feel like letting go….” —Letting Go, Venus and Mars album. Paul McCartney SH: Were some of The individual Beatles into astrology? If so, which ones and why? Tin Man Grok A.I.… Read More A.I. Hedges on The Beatles and Astrology. A “Conversation” With Tin Man.
In George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass triple album he has a song called Awaiting on You All in which he claimed that the Pope owned “51% of General Motors And the stock exchange is the only thing he’s qualified to quote us.” Hmm…. So I wanted to Fact Check this startling claim. But how?… Read More When George Harrison Fibbed About the Pope
When in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the avant-garde was given diverse powerful platforms to announce that traditional art forms were passé, and art galleries exchanged space for the mystic likes of Picasso, Surrealism, and, in some degree, Andy Warhol, etc., they arguably prepared the way for the denial of natural gender distinctions and the… Read More From Rembrandt to Picasso
“Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream”—John Lennon Perhaps it is one of those curious fearful symmetries that the words of John Lennon quoted above are found in the Beatles’ album titled ‘Revolver’…and that he was finally gunned down, shot multiple times in the back by a “fan”. I grew up reading Kerouac… Read More John Lennon and The Seductions of Beautiful Nothing
…and Epistemology. [P]hilosophy and religion deal with the same basic questions. Christians, and especially evangelical Christians, have tended to forget this. Philosophy and religion do not deal with different questions, though they give different answers and in different terms. The basic questions of both philosophy and religion (and I mean religion here in the wide… Read More Francis Schaeffer on the Philosophy of being
Me: Please tell me why the French national anthem began The Beatles’ All You Need is Love. A.I. The Beatles opened “All You Need Is Love” with the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” to symbolize unity and internationalism for a global audience. When The Beatles performed “All You Need Is Love” on June 25, 1967,… Read More The Beatles, A.I., and La Marseillaise
“We’ll get you through your children.” —Allen Ginsberg, 1958 The core of the heresy of the Free Spirit lay in the adept’s attitude towards himself: he believed that he had attained a perfection so absolute that he was incapable of sin. Disclaiming book-learning and theological subtleties, they rejoiced in direct knowledge of God- indeed, they… Read More The Beat Generation… cultural catastrophe. By Roger Kimball
I don’t mean to rain on Patrick Madrid’s (or anyone’s) parade. But consider. He writes in bold letters on ‘X’ that the Beatles are the “Greatest Band in History. Don’t Trust Anyone Who Doesn’t Like The Beatles!“. But the Beatles cast both genius and deepest shade. I’m in my 7th decade of life. I’ve loved… Read More The Beatles and Where We Are.
… the campaigners trying to legalise class-A drugs – a network stretching to the top of the US government….Timothy Leary remembers Aldous Huxley saying, “We must spread the word… The obstacle to this evolution, Timothy, is the Bible.” Many proponents suggest that drugs can help us evolve to a more perfected state – what Stamets… Read More Inside the Psychedelic Elite
Note: Mary Daly died in January 2010. It is good to be tolerant, even of incoherent things, we are told today. The devil himself ought to be given a seat at the table. So the courts have ruled. But that can’t stop us from noticing that Mary Daly represents the meltdown of the dissident transgressive… Read More Mary Daly: The Witch of Boston College
David Starkey tracks the history and influence of the Dada movement of art and its influence in modern culture and life through his experiences with the Royal Academy. BBC: December 3, 2004. An autographed gentleman’s urinal has been named the most influential modern art work of all time. “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, which shocked the… Read More April is the cruellest month
“The television screen [or, similarly, Internet / Netflix ‘entertainment’] has become the retina of the mind’s eye…the battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena, the Videodrome. “Whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore television is reality and reality is… Read More Perception, Reality and the Videodrome
Or, dreams come true… In No Speed Limit, author and cultural analyst Steven Shaviro writes, “In his science fiction novel Pop Apocalypse, Lee Konstantinou imagines the existence of a “Creative Destruction” school of Marxist-Leninist thought. The adherents of this school “interpret Marx’s writings as literal predictions of the future, so they consider it their mission… Read More The Creative Destruction school of Marxist-Leninist thought.
Before there was Gloria Steinem or Michel Foucault, there was Dada. And it was deadly serious. Kickoff, Demolition time. “Dada thrives on contradictions. It is creative and destructive. Dada denounces the world and wishes to save it.” So says one narrator of journalist-filmmaker Mick Gold’s Europe After the Rain, a 1978 Arts Council of Great Britain documentary… Read More 1914. Europe After the Rain.
It gladdens the heart to hear that some time ago Jordan Peterson’s wife is reported to have converted to Christ and the Catholic Faith. Will her husband follow her example? Will he part with his longstanding apparent guru, Carl Jung, and reject Jung’s neo-gnostic transvaluations of the Savior? All Catholics must sincerely hope so, for… Read More Jordan Peterson & The Jung Cult
Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War Independent, UK. 1995 For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works… Read More Independent, UK: Modern art was Government ‘weapon’.
A fascinating look at the devolution of culture and the arts over time through the lenses and timelines of Beat, Folk, and Rock ‘n Roll. Superseding orthodox Marxism and other political and social movements, theBeat Movement was the ovum of all later decadent movements in both cultures and music . The Encyclopedia Brittanica defined the… Read More Psychedelia, Beat, Folk, Rock’n’roll…and Us
Why “faith and culture”? Do they go together? Can they be separated? Can faith exist without culture? Can culture exist without faith? In the broadest sense of the word, faith and culture are inextricably connected because a culture is always an expression of the faith which informs it. If a culture is animated by a… Read More Faith and Culture by Joseph Pearce
“The visionary chemist Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s master magician and gentlehearted torturer – the agency’s “poisoner in chief.” As head of the MK-ULTRA mind control project, he directed brutal experiments at secret prisons on three continents. He made pills, powders, and potions that could kill or maim without a trace – including some intended… Read More How Evil Thee, Sidney? How Evil We?
“The issue [of the week] is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”–Students for a Democratic Society, Marxist SDS. Revolutionary Con Man Saul Alinsky. Inciting “Power Responses”: No boys, no girls, no mothers, no fathers, no religion…“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for‘ (Apropos of the above hymn to Obama, ironically, Black… Read More Always the Revolution
Weaponizing Jesus, Flowers, Rainbows… It was never a controversy about skin color for Catholics, despite NCRs disingenuous claims. The problem went much, much, deeper. “First unveiled on NBC’s Today Show in 2000, Janet McKenzie’s painting, Jesus of the People was the first place winner of the National ‘Catholic’ Reporter’s global competition to identify an image of Jesus… Read More Why NCRs Androgynous ‘Jesus 2000’ Was a Problem
Dr. Lyell Asher.June 10, 2022. “[It is] critical that we ask: In whose interest is it to persuade students that a university is a “home” where they’re not to think? In whose interest is it to persuade them that they’re fragile, that they’re threatened, that words are violence, that an imagined slight is as bad… Read More Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults
Catholic Critique 